


As happy as sin in a fear-shaken world

by Esinde Nayrall (red_squared)



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Fix-It, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-25
Updated: 2019-04-25
Packaged: 2020-01-31 16:07:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18594739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/red_squared/pseuds/Esinde%20Nayrall
Summary: An attempt at a fix-it ficlet. Spoiler-iffic summary under the cut in the notes.





	As happy as sin in a fear-shaken world

**Author's Note:**

> 20 connected drabbles in an attempt at a post-Endgame fixit that works with/around canon rather than ignoring it outright.
> 
> Steve and Stucky centric, and based on the premise that Endgame didn't run 10 minutes too long but instead ran about half an hour too short.
> 
> Also a little Bruce/Nat for those who want to see it. 
> 
> Unbeta'd, first fic in this fandom and first fic after a looooong dry spell.

_I couldn't care less_  
_For what might go wrong_  
_And I'm as happy as sin_  
_In a fear-shaken world_

(“As Sure as I Am” – from Crowded House's “Woodface”)  


* * *

  
At first, Bucky keeps reminding himself that it’s been five years for Steve, and that the Steve he’s come back to is not the Steve he left behind, but…

They’ve lost so many people, Bucky knows the difference between a grieving Steve and a guilty one.

Steve’s no coward when it comes to himself. But Bucky knows what it takes for Steve to hurt the ones he loves, even when it’s for the best.

“What did you do, the five years I was gone?”

Steve looks relieved to be asked straight out.

“Before The Battle. I fucked up. I’m sorry.”

 

* * *

 

Banner insists the stones be put back as soon as possible, before they can be misused or destroyed.  

Steve insists that the mission to return the stones wait until after they farewell Stark.

On top of everything else, Bucky knows that Steve’s relationship with Stark has been a complicated one, so he doesn’t take anything amiss at first.

But in the weeks following The Battle, Bucky sees that Steve spends an awful lot of time talking to Strange, Nebula, Pym and Lang.

“Should we be worried?” Wilson asks him.

“About Steve?” He makes himself smile. “Why would we stop now?”

 

* * *

 

On this night, he notices the way Steve watches him undress.

“What? Does this make me look fat?” he says, indicating his left arm.

“I’m sorry,” Steve replies at once.

“What are you sorry for, baby?” 

“You’re the _same_ ,” Steve says. He takes Bucky’s hand, links their fingers and taps the arm Shuri made for him. “Nothing’s changed.”

This is new. ‘Til now, he’s only been able to get Steve to say that he fucked up and that he’s so sorry.

“Why does that make you sorry?” he asks.

Steve smiles like he wants to cry.

“Because I fucked up.”

 

* * *

 

Steve will tell Bucky when he’s ready, but Bucky’s no idiot. He knows what’s coming.

The night before the memorial, before Steve’s mission, is like that afternoon before the Stark Expo -- two people saying goodbye to one another with their bodies instead of words.  

He tries to stay present as they undress, as they trade off, as they rest and as they start again.

Bucky takes into his heart the way Steve looks, how he sounds, how he _feels_ , because if this is all he gets to have, these memories will need to last the rest of his life.

 

* * *

 

Bucky’s never sought to stand between Steve and Peggy, and he’s not going to start now.

But he’s not an uncaring asshole either, so he’s there with Wilson as Banner and Steve make the final preparations.

“One to get you to New York 2012,” Banner says, counting out the Pym cannisters. “One for Vormir 2014, one for _Morag_ 2014, one for Asgard 2013, one for Camp Lehigh 1970 and two back-ups. Then, do you have…?”

“The spare suit,” Steve says. Nobody has mentioned Widow, but Bucky knows who it’s for. “With one cannister to get back here, and two back-ups.”

 

* * *

 

Bucky can’t bring himself to say much to Steve before Steve goes. Steve’s already had third and fourth thoughts and Bucky is not about to confuse or conflict him further when it looks like he’s made up his mind.

All he can think is that the sooner Steve goes, the sooner he’ll be back…

…or not.

It shouldn’t be a surprise, and it shouldn’t hurt, when Bruce flips the return switch and Steve fails to materialise.

But that’s nothing compared to how he feels when he and Wilson walk to the lakeside and see everything Bucky suspected come to pass.

 

* * *

 

“Man, a ride home’s the least I can do,” Wilson tells Steve. “Where you at, these days?”

“Just off Flastbush, across from the Sarah Rogers Memorial Hospital,” Steve says.

 _“_ Memorial… _”_ Wilson starts to say, and then frowns at Bucky. “Is that new? Like, after-the-snap-the-first-time new?”

Surely Bucky would _know_ if there were a Brooklyn hospital named after Sarah? And that’s when he notices the quantum anchor on Steve’s wrist.

“Yeah, see that’s where it gets tricky,” Steve says kindly. “See, I’m not… from around here. Even if you do look exactly like our son,” Steve says, indicating Bucky.

“’Our’ son?”

 

* * *

 

“Three people can be married to one another where you come from? Seriously?” Banner asks, like it’s the weirdest thing he’s ever heard of.

“Don’t answer that,” Bucky says, since Other-Steve had already indicated he didn’t want to discuss his spouse…s.

“ _That’s_ what you want to know?” Wilson laughs. “Not what life was like with no Cold War, no arms race, no Red Scare… Oh _shit_ , wait – and no Wilson, right?”

“If there was a Sam Wilson where I’m from, do you think I’d be giving the shield to _you_?”

“Why _are_ you giving the shield to him?” Bucky asks.

 

* * *

 

Other-Steve looks around at Wilson and Banner, and they excuse themselves to give him and Bucky some privacy.

“I’m not your husband. And I don’t know what he’s trying to atone for. I never met him, because I was still in the ice in ’45 when the three of them put a bullet in Zola’s head.”

__The three of who?_ _

“The life I’ve-- _we’ve_ had… I don’t know how much of that is down to him. But I thought I should find some way to let him know it was worth his trouble. Even if I can’t thank him myself.”

 

* * *

 

“You don’t need Captain America anymore, where you’re from?” Bucky asks.

“Haven’t properly since, oh… the 1960s? But I wanted to be sure. And if nothing else, I’m pretty certain nobody wants me to put the outfit on these days. Not even my husband.”

“Your husband?” Bucky asks quietly.

 _The three of them_ , he realises – a different Peggy, a different Bucky, and his very own Steve.

Other-Steve smiles gently and catches Bucky’s metal hand, tapping his wedding ring against it.

“We had the three of them made the same,” Other-Steve says. “And my husband wears his on his left hand.”

 

* * *

 

“Captain Rogers?” Banner says, as he come back to the bench.

“It’s Carter-Barnes, actually. But you can just call me Steve, or Cap.”

“It looks like your ride’s finally here,” Banner says, sounding apologetic.

Bucky whips around immediately to the quantum platform, where Wilson is helping Steve down the steps.

“Before you go back, I need to know one more thing,” Bucky says, turning to Other-Steve. “It’s not for me, but I know he’s going to ask.”

“You’re always looking out for us, aren’t you?” Other-Steve says, sounding fond. “Yeah. You can ask me anything, Buck.”

“Your husband…” he begins.

 

* * *

 

Bucky leaves it to Wilson and Banner to see Captain Carter-Barnes safely home, re-using the suit the for Romanoff that brought him here, and their second-to-last cannister of Pym particles.

Steve looks the worst Bucky has ever seen him, short of when he’s seen Steve on the brink of death, and his expression is absolutely _miserable_ – something that really stands out after half an hour with the other Steve.

For whatever reason, Steve and Other-Steve shouldn’t be near one another, although…

“Tell me why that matters if you’re from different realities and not from the same timeline. You _are_ , right?”

 

* * *

 

“I mean, I don’t _think_ I’d start fighting him like I fought myself in 2012,” Steve explains.

“Buddy, I would hand-on-heart _pay_ to see that,” Bucky laughs. Even Steve cracks a smile. “Let me guess, you told him that you could do this all day, and got kicked in the balls for your trouble?”

“It was him! And it definitely wasn’t me, because I don’t remember that happening in 2012.”

“So you won?”

“Obviously, since the mind stone -- ”

“Yeah, but _how_ did you beat him?”

“I -- ” Steve attempts, before his mouth pulls down at the corners.

 

* * *

 

“You came back as if nothing had changed,” Steve says. “Like I had never found out you were still alive, or told Sitwell that I was Hydra, in 2012.”

That’s when Bucky gets it. This was never about Peggy, or at least never _entirely_ about Peggy.

“You tried to fix the world for us?”

“I tried again when I went back to 1970, but when I got to 2012 it was the same. So I spoke to the Ancient One.”

“Okay…”

“She told you that I couldn’t fix the future by changing the past.”

“But you had to be sure?”

 

* * *

 

Because he wouldn’t be Steve – wouldn’t be _this_ Steve – if he didn’t try.

Even knowing that Nebula had survived shooting herself, and that 2012 hadn’t affected today, and 1970 hadn’t affected 2012, Steve had gone back to 1945.

“I thought if I started far enough, I could find you. Like I should have. And spared you all that pain,” Steve says, clinging tight to Bucky’s metal hand.

Bucky’s pretty sure he’s never actually seen Steve cry, but he thinks they might be close tonight.

“Steve,” he says gently, pulling Steve into his arms. “Yes, you did, baby. And it worked.”

 

* * *

 

“But it didn’t work for _you_ ,” Steve says, after Bucky tells him about Other-Steve and his family.  

Bucky looks at him, thinking carefully about what he says.

“I know you’re hurting,” is what he starts with. “We lost Stark. And before that, you’d lost Romanoff. I’m _never_ going to tell you that you shouldn’t try to fix that, if that’s what you want, okay? But,” he adds quickly, when he sees the look on Steve’s face, “you don’t need to do it for _me_.

“What happened to me wasn’t your fault, and you don’t need to undo it for me.”

 

* * *

 

Bucky lets Steve get cleaned up while he breaks the news to Banner that returning the soul stone was not enough to return Romanoff.

He’s pretty sure Banner trusts that Steve would have done everything he could, but he also sees the way Banner looks at the last Pym cannister.

In the end, it’s up to Banner.

Bucky knows there is no way Steve would have simply returned the soul stone to the Red Skull no questions asked.

But he also understands that perhaps Banner needs to see it for himself to be sure that they really did try everything.  

 

* * *

 

“Where the fuck did _that_ come from?”

“Oh, you mean _this_ shiny roundness?” Wilson says, holding up the shield and grinning like a kid with a new bike.

“Your smug doppleganger dropped it off before he rubbed our faces in his soft life,” Bucky tells Steve.

Looking at Steve’s face, Bucky is _kicking_ himself for not frisbeeing that thing into the ocean when he had the chance, but then Wilson saves him.

“I was taught to share and all, but I want to be very clear that he specifically gave this to _me_ and asked _me_ to be Captain America.”

 

* * *

 

“I’m sorry I kept you waiting,” Steve tells Bucky, watching him as he’s undressing for bed.

“Next time, I’m going with you.” It was only half an hour for him, Banner and Wilson, but it sounds like it was a couple of months for Steve.

“There’s not going to _be_ a next time.”

“Well, there’ll be a next _something_ , and I’ll be damned if I leave you to face it alone again.”

“You’re still exactly the same,” Steve says.

“Yeah, nothing you try and pull in the past is going to change anything, okay? This is what you’re stuck with.”

 

* * *

 

Romanoff and Stark were massive pieces of Steve’s already small world after the first snap. Losing them will hurt a while.

But.

“I think you’ve seen the only way to fix this world is from this side, going forward. So if you want to – and I’m not saying you have to, Steve, you’ve done so much already, but if you _want_ to. Well, you have to stay.”

It’ll take time, but Bucky knows that he can convince and then remind Steve how blessed Bucky feels to have him. And hopes that one day, Steve will feel the same way too. 

**Author's Note:**

> I forced myself to keep this to a handful of drabbles, otherwise this would turn into a 500K that would remain unfinished and unposted. I haven't posted fanfic in forever and this was a nice motivation. 
> 
> With the exception of the Sirius!rescue in HPatPoA, time travel in fiction generally makes no sense and leaves plot holes you can drive a truck through, and Endgame is no different. (ETA: Discworld tends to lean into it and handwaves away alternate pasts/trousers of time/parallel presents with 'it's probably all the quantum', and I've chosen to do the same thing.)
> 
> One premise of the fixit is to explain the quantum weirdness based on my memories of: the conversation between Hulk and the Ancient One that requires that the stones be returned; the actions in 2012 (Cap telling him 2012 Cap about Bucky and then Hailing Hydra, Loki GTFO-ing with the Tesseract) having no bearing on the timeline in the future; Nebula killing her past-self while remaining in the present; and original timeline Steve's shield getting shredded by Thanos but there being a new shield to hand over to Sam at the end -- if Steve didn't find another Steve in another reality, then where did the replacement shield come from?!
> 
> I'm interpreting all of this as meaning that a big enough deviation in a timeline causes the emergence of an additional, rather than an alternative, future reality. 
> 
> And the second premise of the fixit is the idea that Steve would not Go Quietly into the past and leave well enough alone for the sake of the future, knowing what Hydra cost Bucky and countless others. 
> 
> Steve leaving Bucky makes me sad, but Steve going back to the 1970s and not shaking up the timeline he is in (with Peggy, no less!) makes no sense to me. So while I don't go into too much detail in the drabbles, I imagine 1970s Peggy getting the coordinates to where SHIELD can find the Valkyrie in 1970 before Steve then jumps to 1945, finds Bucky after he falls from the train and then joins up with Peggy to once again shake things up before telling them where they can find their Steve (who is the one that appears at the end) before coming home to an unchanged reality. To say nothing of how Steve would have reacted when he encountered the Red Skull and had to hand back the soul stone. 
> 
> I'm not 100% happy with it, but it's what I wanted to read, and it's done! I'm looking forward to other fixits emerging in days and weeks to come :)


End file.
